Introduction

For a bankrupt country in the middle of hyperinflation, the discovery of a major diamond deposit in Zimbabwe in June 2006 should have been good news. Instead it has provided sustenance to a volatile and violent political elite that suppresses the majority. The power sharing/coalition government in Zimbabwe came into...

Despite outward appearances of crisis, the prospects for sustained peace and security in the Great Lakes region of Africa are better today than at any time since the mid-1980s.

Tony Blair was right to say that Moammar Gaddafi's rehabilitation is "a very, very important signal for the whole of the Arab world."

Although this brief survey of five current case studies of UN peacekeeping is necessarily summary in nature, I believe that the evidence forms a sufficient pattern to conclude that the UN is substantially overextended and in danger of becoming more so.

The UNis involved in conflicts, or is considering involvement, where it has neither the authority nor the competence to be effective, and its instinctive reaction to difficulties it has encountered has been simply to do more of the same.

If the Bush administration wantsa "forward strategy of freedom" for the Muslim world, it cannot turn a blind eye to Libyan president Gaddafi's internal repression and international adventurism.